


Harbor

by callowyn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Multi, Seals (Ambiguous), Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 02:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5187899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callowyn/pseuds/callowyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako meets some unusual wildlife.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an incomplete vision of a fic inspired by [this post](http://callowyn.tumblr.com/post/92972585895) and [this post](http://callowyn.tumblr.com/post/88802021755) on tumblr. The first chapter is the scenes I actually wrote out; the second chapter is a summary of how the rest of the story would go if I had the wherewithal to finish it.

When they're nearly there, Raleigh breaks off speaking and lifts his nose. "We're heading toward the water," he says, almost accusatory. 

His sense of smell must be very good; Mako can't yet pick out the scent of brine in this shore breeze. "A few more blocks," she says. His steps have turned strangely tense, though he doesn't slow down. "Have you spent a lot of time around the ocean, Mr. Becket?" 

Raleigh seems to find this funny. "Little bit, yeah." 

"I always loved it as a child," Mako confides. "Feeling the waves lift me up and place me down on the sand again." This isn't a sentiment she tries to express often, and she takes a moment to choose her words. "It's not that I believe the ocean is only gentle. It deserves the same respect as a dangerous animal, or a storm. But to me, I don't know. The water has always felt kind." 

"I used to think the same thing," Raleigh says quietly. He tucks his chin deeper into the wool of his sweater. 

They reach the jetty, and Mako pauses to acknowledge his confused look. "I suppose I should have explained," she says, inclining her head. "I live on my research vessel. I dock here when I'm not making observations." 

"You live on the ocean?" Raleigh follows her down the pier and hesitates only a moment before stepping on deck. "My br—" He laughs oddly. "My brother and I used to joke that we'd get a houseboat when we grew up." 

"I hope you enjoy the chance to see mine, then," says Mako, and ushers him inside. 

The dimly-lit cabin feels a bit awkward once she's closed the door behind them, and she fusses with her coat and scarf, watching Raleigh from behind her hair. For all his forthrightness at the bar, he doesn't seem in any hurry to get back to it, gazing around at her clutter with interest. His head nearly brushes the ceiling. 

"It's sort of small," she apologizes, "but with only myself and my research, the boat gives me great freedom. I can clean—" She scoops up some of her charts and looks for someplace better to put them. 

“No, leave it." Raleigh peers at one of her logbooks. "What is all this?" 

“Observations.” Mako hurries to look over Raleigh's shoulder. Luckily the journal lies open to a benign page about harbor seals in molt; she doesn’t want him to read one of the fanciful rambles about her seal and think she’s not serious in her work. “The national government funds aerial surveys every year to track the population, but there’s more to these seals’ lives than the number of them. They grow up; they travel; they speak to each other.” She points to one of the charts. “Knowing the population has declined doesn’t tell you _why_. Fishermen drive off or kill the seals that interfere with their nets. Cruise ships frighten pups into the cold water when they should be hauled out in the sun to feed. There should be—" But she stops herself, laughing self-consciously. "I'm sorry. Most people don’t let me go on and on." 

Raleigh turns, bringing attention to how close they're standing. “You really care about them. That’s amazing, Mako." 

Her cheeks warm, and she raises her eyebrows. “Did you come here to listen to me talk about seals?" 

He grins. “It’s a definite bonus." 

From anyone else that would be only flirting, but even when he’s teasing her, Raleigh’s words carry the weight of sincerity. She leans up to kiss him, once, and then again when he turns to face her properly. "I think we can make better plans." 

Raleigh crowds her up against the wall, running his mouth along her neck and placing sharp little bites up and down her throat. She skims her hands across his hips and the muscles of his stomach and he eagerly reciprocates, but when she tries to actually remove his thick woolen sweater, he draws back. 

"Are you all right?" Mako asks, trying not to be horribly disappointed. 

Raleigh's tongue darts out to touch his lips. "Yeah, no, I'm okay. Just thought I should warn you I've got some pretty bad scars." 

Mako removes her hands, though she can't help the curiosity in her voice when she says, "May I ask what happened?" 

Raleigh shrugs. Then, without looking at her, he peels off all his layers with one practiced wriggle. 

She doesn't gasp, but it's a near thing—four deep gouges are scored into the meat of Raleigh's shoulder and down across his chest, puckered and white with age. Where did he get an injury like that? Mako’s hand hovers halfway between them. 

“It’s okay to touch them if you want to.” 

Mako draws her gaze back to his face. His eyes have gotten darker, large and strange in the low light, and she gets an odd feeling of déjà vu. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” 

He moves closer again and lingers with his mouth just out of reach. “Well, I am the only one getting undressed.” 

Mako does trace her fingers over the scars then, memorizing their ridges and curves before letting her touch wander across the rest of his very fine chest. Raleigh cups the back of her head to kiss her again, deeper. After a few minutes of indulgence, she nudges him aside and sheds her own shirt—it is, after all, only fair. She expects him to catch her mouth again as soon as she's free of the fabric, but instead Raleigh draws back a little, moving his gaze across her skin like its own kind of touch. 

"You're beautiful," he says, just simple enough to be real. 

Mako feels her cheeks color but lifts her chin, letting him look. "As are you, Mr. Becket. Shall we stand here and admire each other?" 

Raleigh reaches out to run his knuckles over the soft parts of her belly, up her ribs and around the side of her breasts. "Your houseboat," he says, "your rules." 

Mako grins at him. "Then I rule no more talking," she says, and tugs him away toward the bedroom. 

* * *

The ice floe rocks gently beneath him. Raleigh whuffs and rolls over, luxuriating. The air smells of fish. He feels warm—very warm—and any minute now Yancy is going to— 

He sits up, human and naked, in Mako Mori's bed. 

Mako is no longer in the room, though he hears kitchen noises and someone humming from beyond the door. It gives him time to shake off the memories and remember his limbs. A seal barks somewhere in the harbor just outside, and the sound makes Raleigh flinch. 

"I have eggs," Mako offers when he emerges, "and cereal. These fish I wanted to cook while they were fresh—I apologize for the smell." She turns the mess of frying trout in the pan. 

Raleigh's stomach growls audibly even in this form. "I could really go for some fish, actually," he says. 

Mako beams at him. He scoots around the table, trying to stretch his arms without hitting the ceiling, and when he looks again her eyelids have dropped to half mast in appreciation. 

Raleigh retrieves his discarded sweaters from the floor even as he preens under the attention. It's cozy enough in here that he only really needs his undershirt, but the short sleeves would leave part of his scars visible; he's not sure Mako really wants to see them now that the hookup is over. 

"Are you cold?" she asks when he goes to put the sweater on. Raleigh shrugs. Mako flicks a glance at his shoulder but doesn't say anything, just slides him a plate of freshly fried fish. 

Even after so long as a human, there's always a moment when sense memory has him expecting fish to slide down raw, but that soon fades under the crispy texture of this meal. The spices are simple, just butter and salt and a little something for heat, but it's exactly what Raleigh wanted. He has to focus on using utensils instead of swallowing them whole. 

“You are the first person I’ve met who wanted fish in the morning,” Mako observes. 

Raleigh gulps down another piece. “They’re delicious. I’d have these for breakfast any day.” 

“Thank you.” Mako serves more fish for herself and joins him at the table. “Aleksis, the man who brings me part of his catch, he says I eat so much fish that I must be part seal myself.” 

Raleigh freezes. Does she suspect—but no, Mako seems unaware that she said anything important, focused entirely on the plate in front of her. Maybe he shouldn't have been so eager. He casts around for something to distract her and lands on the papers still littering the table. 

"Is that a map?" 

Mako tilts her head to see what he's looking at. Funnily, her cheeks go sort of pink. "I tracked the movement of one seal over several days. That's just the record of where he went." 

Raleigh recognizes that stretch of coastline. Even so far removed, his heart starts pounding harder. "What was it doing there?" 

"That's the funny thing." Mako comes to stand close to him, bringing the faint scent of her skin. "Most seals, when you see them moving so much, they have a purpose: hunting food, or avoiding dangers, maybe seeking territory to attract a mate. This seal kept swimming up and down this area without doing any of those things." She tucks her hair behind her ear. "I felt like he was looking for something." 

Ridiculous, to think what he's thinking now. Thousands of seals live in this single harbor alone. It's been five years. "You were watching a long time," Raleigh says hoarsely. "Did he—did the seal ever find what it was looking for?" 

Mako stares out the window at the cold blue water. "I don't know," she says. She bites her lip. "The third day, I got closer to him than I should have. Seals frighten easily. I wanted to take his photograph, you see—I recognized him by the terrible scar along one side of his face." She touches her own cheek, then turns back to the table and rearranges some of the papers. "He stopped his search and looked at me from the water. I almost felt he would open his mouth and speak." 

Raleigh's shoulder burns. _A killing blow, the paw crashing strong and terrible against Yancy's skull, so much blood no one could survive it—_ "Then what?" 

Mako shrugs. "He disappeared. But not before I got this." And she lays a photograph in front of him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is how the rest of it goes.

Prologue: the Beckets five years ago, seal-shaped and carefree, the first time Raleigh sees a younger Mako Mori peering into the water from the stern of Stacker's boat. Yancy tells him to stop staring, the humans are going to notice, but Raleigh kind of wants to get noticed. He keeps following her, poking his head out of the water whenever he sees her boat above him, and Yancy reluctantly follows suit. Mako's burgeoning fascination with the sea is only intensified by the fascination it apparently has with her.

In one version, they meet Mako like this, and events proceed as in [tentacledog's marvelous fic](http://tentacledog.tumblr.com/post/97330913365/). But this is a slightly sadder story, and this Yancy is lost. 

Raleigh flees.  

Five years later, the scene that is written: Mako meets Raleigh by chance and brings him home. Raleigh's been human ever since he lost Yancy, his skin ratted up and hidden in an old safe at the back of his closet, and Mako's boat is the closest he's been to water in years. But you know who's in the photograph, don't you? Seals recognize the patterns of each other's fur, and in any event there's the scar. Mako's seal is Yancy.

Of course finding him isn’t enough, because while seal!Yancy does show signs of human intelligence, he gives no hint that he knows who Raleigh is. Nor does he seem to remember that he once had a very different shape. In desperation Raleigh retrieves his own skin, thinking to talk seal to seal, but when Mako watches him shake it out she sees the gaping rips in the fur. He can’t wear it anymore.

Flashback: it was just a polar bear. Magical seals are still susceptible to teeth and claws. Raleigh looked tender so the bear went for him first, but Yancy got in its way because of course he did. One swipe to Yancy's head and there's blood all over the ice and in the water. Raleigh fights back, tries to distract it before it feasts on his dying brother, and he manages to draw the bear off toward shore. But seals move slowly on land. The bear raises another paw and gouges into Raleigh’s shoulder, nearly taking off one flipper. In desperation Raleigh shifts and casts his skin behind him—and the bear takes the bait, tearing at the fur with its teeth as though it’s a real seal, while Raleigh flees to the cabin he and Yancy occupy when they’re human. Finds the shotgun. Runs back outside. Raleigh’s no marksman, but his bullet hits something vital; the bear howls, lumbers toward him, then falls. He gets closer and shoots again, this time through the eye. The bear stills. Raleigh picks up his ravaged sealskin and goes back to the water, but the ocean has already reclaimed Yancy's  dark shape and nothing is left but the blood. It's a long five years.

So what can they do, Raleigh and Mako, with their seal that doesn't remember and this skin that doesn't work? The answer is twofold. Yancy doesn't know his brother but he still keeps coming back, so Raleigh spends hours talking to him, recounting every memory they ever shared as humans or seals. He talks himself hoarse and sometimes Yancy dives away after a fish mid-word, but sometimes he tilts his head with a little seal frown like something about this is familiar.

And Mako, who would never leave an injured animal in pain, searches for a way to heal Raleigh's skin. Her first suggestion is a practical one: it's torn? Stitch it up. Raleigh tries, but his fingers are clumsy with a needle and the thread doesn't want to catch. "Maybe I need to give up my voice," he jokes, raspy from talking so long to a seal that won't talk back. That day Yancy had gotten caught in the tendrils of a jellyfish, and some of the detached stingers are still tangled around his flipper. Raleigh's picking them off as Yancy makes loud complaints, flinching when they burn his own hands. Something connects in Mako’s mind—her love of fairy tales is secretly keen as her love of science—and she remembers a different story, about a girl who wove nettles into clothes for her brothers to return them to their proper shapes.

Mako knows how tales of selkies go, and she’s never asked Raleigh to lend her his skin. But she knows he keeps it under his pillow when he sleeps. She collects the threads of jellyfish venom that he peeled off his brother’s fur. Silence is key to this spell, as is pain; the magic only works for one selfless and pure of heart. Is she selfless? She wants so many things. She threads a needle with the tendril and it shouldn’t fit but it does. Years of repairing sails and suturing wounds means her stitches are tight and even, though the venom bites red marks into her fingers. Unlike the normal thread, these stitches hold.

It takes her three nights, and Raleigh never notices the holes closing up; he hasn't looked at his skin since it betrayed him. He wonders at Mako's silence, if perhaps she's grown tired of his intrusion. Mako wears gloves all day and doesn't touch him. He wonders what either of them are doing here. But on the third night he can't sleep, and when he gets up he sees Mako in the kitchen, brooding over a sealskin. It's his.

Mako sees his shadow but she's so close that she pulls the skin closer, her numb fingers flying to finish, and of course Raleigh interprets it all wrong; she ties the last knot just before he snatches his skin out of her hand.

She yells "Raleigh!" after him, her silence ended with the completion of her improvised spell, but instinct propels him far from anyone who would steal this most precious part of himself. His shock, his queasy horror, the look on Mako's face all keep him from thinking; he pulls the skin on as easily as he ever has and dives into the water. The venom doesn't sting him. The skin is whole.

But we're left with Mako, human and alone, watching the seal vanish off the side of her boat. She wants to chase after him but she knows she'd make it worse, because how can he trust her after this? Habit alone brings her to one of Yancy's old haunts, and there she sits, rudderless and adrift. Days pass.

Then: a seal. Her seal, not Raleigh, the scar across Yancy's head as prominent as ever. He bobs up out of the water and barks at her until Mako comes to see why, at which point Yancy splashes her in the face. Indignant but inexplicably cheered, Mako informs him that while his brother might tolerate that sort of behavior, she certainly won't. Yancy whuffs his seal laugh and swims a little ways away, bobbing up again to watch her expectantly. 

Well, Mako knows a sign when she sees one. She steers her boat wherever Yancy leads her, past the usual course and into a hidden little cove she's never seen before. There's another seal there. Like Yancy, it's badly scarred; unlike Yancy, the wounds on this seal have been stitched back together. Raleigh slips into the water when he sees her and Mako tries very hard not to show the regret on her face. Yancy disappears after him, and she has a moment's bitter wonder why he bothered to bring her here when it's clear Raleigh doesn't want to see her—except then they emerge, both of them, and this time both of them are human.

... 

(AND THEN IT'S JUST A BEAUTIFUL THREESOME OF THESE BEAUTIFUL GD PILOTS I'M SORRY I CAN'T WRITE THIS BUT JUST THINK ABOUT THEIR LOVE)


End file.
